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Joe Mazzulla is the Center of Hilarious Clue on 'Jeopardy!'

All those hours of watching 'The Town' have paid off.

Kyle Koster

Boston Celtics head coach Joe Mazzulla made it to Jeopardy.
Boston Celtics head coach Joe Mazzulla made it to Jeopardy. / David Butler II-Imagn Images
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Joe Mazzulla has watched The Town with a frequency that would astound even the most committed Rewatchables host, a quirk that fits in line with his many other quirks. But he's the head coach of a defending world champion so the borderline alarming behavior is fun and cute instead of seen as a desperate plea for help.

Mazzula offered his most expansive thoughts on what candidly seems like a harmless addiction earlier this year on Pardon My Take.

“As an assistant, I watched it two to three times a week, easy,” Mazzulla said of “The Town." “We do most of our work after the games, so you have to stay up late at night. I never liked waking up with work to do from the day before. When I was an assistant, and I had to turn in my postgame edits, I would go home and just work from 11 p.m. to 1 a.m. I needed something to kind of keep me up or keep me going. 

“There was a three-movie shuffle (the other two were “Whiplash” and “The Dark Knight”) that I would turn on in order to get me through the game so that I could get to bed. The Town ended up being one of them. It’s not something that I’m obsessed with to the point where I’m still watching it. That was a part of my postgame process that helped me.”

This information, which has become widely known in sporting circles, broke through the palace walls of Jeopardy! and into the writers room, creating this amazing answer on Tuesday night's episode.

It's a relatively easy clue in the category of Heist Movies because of Ben Affleck's involvement but it's still nice that Mazzulla gets a chance to ingrain himself deeper into pop culture. The coach's infatuation with The Town has market-corrected LeBron James's Godfather stage in terms of guys who watch one movie way too much.

Jeopardy! is the big time.

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Kyle Koster
KYLE KOSTER

Kyle Koster is an assistant managing editor at Sports Illustrated covering the intersection of sports and media. He was formerly the editor in chief of The Big Lead, where he worked from 2011 to '24. Koster also did turns at the Chicago Sun-Times, where he created the Sports Pros(e) blog, and at Woven Digital.

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